


And we'll Drink and be Jolly and Drown Melancholy

by The_Dancing_Walrus



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Coping, Developing Relationship, F/M, Recovery, living as an amputee, not angst, since life is a mix of happy and sad I tried to balance the two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-03
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-14 11:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1264759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Dancing_Walrus/pseuds/The_Dancing_Walrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He looks so serious that she wonders whether he’s thinking about her at all or whether his mind is on the dead woman whose name is tattooed on his arm.</p><p>“I’ve got a lot of scars.” He says finally, with a small smile as if he’s trying to make it sound like a boast instead of a warning. </p><p>In which Emma discovers that Killain has lived through more than she thought and is coping better than she'd imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And we'll Drink and be Jolly and Drown Melancholy

Her hands fist in his shirt and tug it loose. She worms a hand underneath. She doesn’t think about the way he stills, her thoughts are blanks and sensations. The tips of two fingers find their way through the cloth to his stomach when he stops her. He pulls back, pushes her gently with the blunt side of his hook.

 

“What?”

 

He looks so serious that she wonders whether he’s thinking about her at all or whether his mind is on the dead woman whose name is tattooed on his arm.

 

“I’ve got a lot of scars.” He says it with a small smile as if he’s trying to make it sound like a boast instead of a warning.

 

They go more slowly and when she eventually gets his shirt off she sees that it’s true. There are welts all over his back, marks up his bad arm from where the socket and its cables have rubbed raw. His stump is the sort of mess she’d have expected from Georgian medicine.

 

Later she finds out that it wasn’t that uncommon not to have a doctor on board a ship, that amputations were left to the cook-

 

She doesn’t comment on any of them and she tries not to stare. She’s known him long enough to guess that the ones she can see aren’t the worst of it.

 

-

 

She hadn’t considered the hook as a part of him, as his hand, until he became…whatever it was they were.

 

She had seen him use it as a weapon, to slash and stab and parry, and that was all it seemed to be at first. A weapon he always held, brandished when he wanted to intimidate and propped rather awkwardly out from his body or hidden when he didn’t.

 

It isn’t until she notices the scratches on her door handles, on the fridge, the frayed pages of books and the dents in some of her furniture that she realises it _is_ his hand.

 

It’s a hand and a weapon and occasionally a hammer or a marlin spike as well.

 

She’s not sure how to feel about that.

 

-

 

He has nightmares, possibly night terrors and she finds out the first time he stays.

 

She wakes when he kicks off the blankets and, half-awake herself, she reaches out to him. She mumbles something that might be ‘what?’

 

His eyes are squeezed shut and the expression on his face is fear and pain and rarefied human distress.

 

He doesn’t scream.

 

He makes tiny hissing, gasping sounds. As if he’s got a puncture. As if he’s trying, desperately, to be quiet.

 

She watches and she worries (not panic, definitely not panic) because she has no idea what to do.

 

The whole thing lasts about ten minutes, then he stops. He turns on his side and curls up around himself. The noise he finally lets out is a wet, choking sound. And then he’s still.

 

She waits for a while. Wonders if she should wake him.

 

Eventually she goes and collects the blankets and puts them back over the bed. She climbs in beside him as quietly as she can.

 

And tries to sleep.

 

-

 

He pushes her away, gently, with the blunt side of his hook. But she already knows about his scars and he’s rapidly running out of good excuses.

 

“What?” She demands.

 

She doesn’t ask if he’ll tell the truth this time but may be it creeps into her tone because his expression is oddly stern.

 

“Just, let me look at you a spell.” His voice comes out gruffer than it should.

 

She does, even though she’s not sure what he’s seeing.

 

She’s not entirely convinced it’s Milah anymore.

 

-

 

He runs away from her, stumbling. She calls after him, more confused than worried. He staggers into the kitchen, tugging his coat off as he goes.

 

It rips all the way up the sleeve.

 

He tears at the harness around his arm but his hand is shaking so it doesn’t so much come off as slip off the stump. He rips the padding away-

 

Then he opens the freezer with so much clumsy, desperate force she almost thinks he’ll break the door. He grabs a tray of ice cubes and clutches it to the stump.

 

He makes the same hissing, gasping sound he does when he has nightmares.

 

She reaches him just as he sinks to the floor. She follows, crouching next to him and yes she’s terrified.

 

“Killian?”

 

He looks up, eyes glazed and gives her a weak smile.

 

“Hullo love.”

 

“Hold on,” She instructs although she hasn’t the faintest idea what’s happening. “I’ll call an ambulance.”

 

His expression changes slowly into something almost endearingly bewildered.

 

“Why?”

 

It lasts about twenty minutes, it might have been longer if he hadn’t talked her into giving him a generous triple of scotch.

 

The ice cubes melt between his fingers and eventually he gets up. Finds the padding and wraps his stump, reorders harness and hook. He picks up his coat and swears mildly at the damage.

 

He apologises for the mess and she wants to scream at him for scaring her out of her wits.

 

Later she reads somewhere that most amputees experience some form of phantom pain. She’s not sure knowing that would have helped at the time.

 

-

 

He vanishes for nine days.

 

She tries not to think about the space in the dock where the Jolly Roger should be.

 

He comes back with a grin that makes her want to hit him and a bag full of rings that are almost certainly not his. When she points out that theft is against the law and she _is_ the sheriff his smile widens.

 

“Outside your jurisdiction Swan.” He taunts and as satisfying as it would be to arrest him on principal she doesn’t actually have any evidence to suggest that they are stolen.

 

Aside from the fact that he’s Captain Hook.

 

He tells her to pick one but she won’t.

 

-

 

He stays at hers for five days afterwards, as if he’s trying to make up for leaving. She gets tired of it quickly.

 

There’s something wrong with all of this and while he’s not the most interesting or pressing mystery in her life he is still something that needs to be solved.

 

She wonders how to get him talking while he shows her son the rings. Henry marvels at them for a moment and then asks whether he stole them. Which makes her smile and Killian quickly change the subject.

 

He plucks a gold one with a large dark blue jewel from the heap and prises out the stone with his hook.

 

He teaches Henry, quickly and roughly, how to navigate by the stars. With a torch, a glass and the dark blue stone.

 

He slips the stone to Henry after dinner and she pretends not to notice.

 

-

 

He pushes her away, gently, with the blunt side of his hook. And this time she really does want to scream.

 

Because she needs to know. Because this keeps happening. Because something is wrong and he won’t tell her what it is.

 

So she asks and he lies.

 

So she asks again and he turns away.

 

She follows and he speeds up.

 

They end up clashing in the living room. He won’t talk so she starts guessing. Milah? Mister Gold? His hand?

 

There’s a list and she runs through it while he pales. When she runs out of breath he gives her a wan smile.

 

“May be it’s just the sailor in me,” He says and it is clearly supposed to be a joke however weak. “You know, rum, sodomy and the lash-”

 

She can tell he regrets it as soon as he’s said it. She can see-

 

And in the silence that follows her mind flits round an idea that, no-

 

No. Something else, she grasps for another idea, anything.

 

“Are you,” She stammers finally. “Are you trying to tell me you’re bisexual?”

 

She hopes she won’t have to explain what that means.

 

His smile turns down into a snarl. “No.”

 

He turns away.

 

And she calls after him but he’s already out of the door.

 

-

 

He doesn’t vanish this time. At least not quite fast enough.

 

She finds him on the Jolly Roger and the first thing he says is that he doesn’t want to talk about it. Which she’d expected but-

 

“You don’t have to,” She reassures him. “But-”

 

He closes off as soon as she says it. His face sets and he’s not her Killian any more he’s Captain Hook.

 

She thinks up a dozen curses on his stubbornness, his pride and tries again.

 

“I need to know if…if it was anyone here.”

 

“What difference does it make, Swan?”

 

“I’m the sheriff.” She explains calmly. “And you just reported a rape.”

 

He doesn’t flinch at the word, he hardens instead.

 

“No, Swan,” He states flatly. “It wasn’t anyone in your little town. Now kindly get off my ship.”

 

She does.

 

This time he vanishes for a month.

 

-

 

She finds out a few things while he’s gone. Chief among them are some technical terms.

 

Traumatic amputation: single below elbow.

 

‘Traumatic’ is meant in the medical sense, encompassing accidents as well as attacks. But looking at the figures it’s hard not to link it to trauma in the colloquial sense.

 

Not when depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts are considered common responses.

 

-

 

She finds herself thinking of the night he shot Belle.

 

Sometimes it makes her so angry at him she can tell herself she’s glad he’s run off.

 

Because he is vicious and he can be cruel.

 

Sometimes she remembers his smile from the hospital bed.

 

Because pirate captain or not he seems to lose more fights than he wins. And he seems to have a knack for starting fights with people he can’t beat.

 

-

 

He comes back the weekend she has Henry.

 

He saunters into Granny’s with a smirk and a new scar above his eyebrow. He sits at their table without asking and rolls a pearl the size of his thumb across the table to Henry. As if it’s a marble.

 

Her son boggles while she fights down all the things she wants to say.

 

“What have you been up to this time?” Is the first thing that comes out.

 

He gives her a happy, self-satisfied smile and starts lying.

 

He spins a ridiculously over the top tale, that presumably ends with him in perfectly legitimate possession of a small sack full of pearls. She’d count the lies in it but there’s no point when one enormous fallacy rolls smoothly into the next and-

 

He smiles through it all and she finds herself smiling too.

 

-

 

She tells him, as tactfully as she can, that he should see Dr Hopper.

 

He’s silent for a moment.

 

She wonders if that means he’ll vanish again with the next tide.

 

Instead he gives her a confused look that he tries to cover with a smirk.

 

“Why?”

 

-

 

It rains all weekend so Henry collects every movie he can find with pirates in it with the aim of making Captain Hook watch them all.

 

There’s an awkward ten minutes during which they fail to explain how a DVD player works without magic.

 

Then they put on Pirates of the Caribbean.

 

And Killian nearly chokes to death laughing.

 

-

 

When he talked about his vendetta against Gold he’d always talked in terms of Milah. Even though it had been obvious that it wasn’t (just) about her anymore.

 

It makes sense to her now, in an odd way.

 

Because Killian Jones throws himself at life. He doesn’t let a lost limb or any form of pain hold him back. He refuses to be anyone’s victim.

 

Even the Dark One’s.

 

He justifies (or perhaps justified) his anger in terms of a loved one because it seemed better, stronger to take revenge on behalf of someone else.

 

She’s sure that’s unhealthy. She’s also sure it’s what’s kept him alive.

 

And sometimes she thinks she should try to fix it but he doesn’t seem to think there’s anything to fix.

 

-

 

Sometimes he pushes her away, gently, with the blunt side of his hook.

 

And sometimes if they take things slower it’s alright. And sometimes it’s not.

 

Sometimes he vanishes with the tide, but not always after arguments.

 

And usually he comes back with what she suspects is someone else’s property.

 

Sometimes he wakes her up in the night, thrashing and gasping for air. Mostly he doesn’t.

 

Sometimes he almost collapses curled around his left arm. She’s learnt to keep spare icepacks in the freezer and he’s learnt to start taking aspirin for it instead of rum.

 

The scars are some of it, but not the whole story.

 

He smiles every day and it never looks like a lie.

 

He makes terrible puns-

 

He teaches Henry the sorts of things his other parents wouldn’t and leaves her to deal with explaining to David how the kid learnt to fight dirty. Or play poker. Or a dozen other things the grandson of a prince probably shouldn’t know at his age.

 

He makes her laugh. He makes her stop being and thinking like Storybrooke’s sheriff for a while.

 

He makes her live a little just to keep up.

 

It might not be Happily Ever After. It might not be True Love.

 

But it is love and they are happy now.

 

And that’s all any one in the real world can ask for.

 

 

 


End file.
